Do you think Communism should be despised as much as Nazism?
- Thread starter Schwartz
- Start date
Thanks for writing that. Do you think fact it has never managed to take hold is indicative that it can’t work? Its all very well blaming evil capitalism for preventing this utopia occurring, but isn’t that just... the way it goes. Not everyone’s gonna play nice I’m afraid, you will encounter people who will ruthlessly seek to accrue power and wealth for their own and it’s ever been thus.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Yeh Mao was simply a cultural icon, like Sir Bruce Forsyth
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Sadness in their eyes
you ever been there? Talked with Joe and Josie average?
JimW
支那暗杀团
This is part of Sen's analysis too, famine had always been endemic and it ended under the reforms the PRC brought in, earlier than in comparable countries, with the policy driven disaster of the Great Leap its last hurrah. Makes the more interesting question can you get rid of landlordism and reform land ownership without a state like the PRC was/became, because that's what it took.
You could at least try and not be so disingenuous. I was quite clearly not referring to what happened during the civil war aka the Red Terror.
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
He was one of those dogged old men
Who lived in the past telling stories you don't want to know
About how it was then: the hunger, the hardship
The hopes and the struggles of so long ago
And we must have looked bored
For like sparks from the cinders
How eyes glowed with anger, his words seemed to burn
He said "I will be heard for my life is not yet over,
I've something to say yet, you've something to learn"
He said, "You who have nothing at all to believe in
To you whose motto is 'money comes first'
Who are you to tell us that our lives have been wasted
That all we've fought for has turned into dust?"
"I was only a lad when we read that in Russia
The workers, the Soviets, had taken all power
And the man they called Lenin who led them
Was our inspiration, his triumph was our finest hour"
"And I'll always remember how fear shook the wealthy
Like thieves who have just been caught out in their crime
But we who had known only war and the workhouse
Rejoiced that a new world was born in that time"
"You can't know what it meant or the pride that we felt
To know working people, people like us
Could shake off the shackles could topple the palaces
Remake the world without ruler or boss"
"It was this kept us going this dream of a new world
Through all those dark years of defeat and despair
When we who were proud to proclaim ourselves Communists
Fought for that world free from hunger and fear"
"It was 'down with the means test, no cuts in our wages'
'We want three pounds a week and a seven hour day'
And there wasn't a thing that we got but we fought for it
Don't you know bosses give nothing away?"
"And the strikes and the marches the battles to beat off
The bailiffs and coppers when hope was still young
Hot heads and hot hearts as we tested our power
'The Workers Triumphant, ' that was our song"
For a time he was silent and lost in his memories
Then but more softly his words came again
"Perhaps we fought for too much perhaps the cost was too much
There are things I know now that I couldn't know then"
"We believed revolution was just 'round the corner
And we were the vanguard to bring it about
And the other Left parties we classed as class traitors
Bourgeois social fascists of that we'd no doubt"
"And then the times changed we campaigned for the Popular Front
The old line might never have been
But we led the workers in combatting fascism
Mosley in London and Franco in Spain"
"We believed we were history's chosen
And Soviet Russia our future our heart and our soul
And the Five Year Plan was a vision of plenty
To us who'd spent half our lives on the dole"
"We knew of the trials and purges of course
And were shocked when we heard those old comrades confess
But yes we defend the first Workers State
In the face of the slander and lies of the press"
And you who have nothing at all to believe in
To you whose motto is money comes first
Who are you to tell us that our lives have been wasted
That all that we've fought for has turned into dust
You may think we were duped well we paid for our dreams
Broken lives, broken marriages, jobs lost and jail
Some lost heart in the Left, some betrayed us for medals
There are always some turncoats whose souls are for sale
But the best of us never surrendered our vision
And we kept the faith through the bleakest defeat
Do you think that was easy surrounded by hatred
The sneer of indifference the hurt of deceit
And our lives were made rich by the cause that we fought for
The friendship the fellowship sharing one pain
To transform society end exploitation
And that day will come yet but not in my time
Again he was silent and what could we tell him
That the world now was different that he'd had his day
That an old man's dreams were not our concern
But still, there was something he wanted to say
Now when I look back I see what we fought against
Homelessness hunger injustice and war
But what did fight for? What dream did we strive for?
I used to know once now I'm no longer sure
But you who have nothing at all to believe in
To you whose motto is 'money comes first'
Who are you to tell us that our lives have been wasted
That all that we've fought for has turned into dust
He was one of those lonely old men
Who live in the past telling stories you don't want to know
About how it was then the hunger, the hardship
The hopes and the struggles of so long ago
Who lived in the past telling stories you don't want to know
About how it was then: the hunger, the hardship
The hopes and the struggles of so long ago
And we must have looked bored
For like sparks from the cinders
How eyes glowed with anger, his words seemed to burn
He said "I will be heard for my life is not yet over,
I've something to say yet, you've something to learn"
He said, "You who have nothing at all to believe in
To you whose motto is 'money comes first'
Who are you to tell us that our lives have been wasted
That all we've fought for has turned into dust?"
"I was only a lad when we read that in Russia
The workers, the Soviets, had taken all power
And the man they called Lenin who led them
Was our inspiration, his triumph was our finest hour"
"And I'll always remember how fear shook the wealthy
Like thieves who have just been caught out in their crime
But we who had known only war and the workhouse
Rejoiced that a new world was born in that time"
"You can't know what it meant or the pride that we felt
To know working people, people like us
Could shake off the shackles could topple the palaces
Remake the world without ruler or boss"
"It was this kept us going this dream of a new world
Through all those dark years of defeat and despair
When we who were proud to proclaim ourselves Communists
Fought for that world free from hunger and fear"
"It was 'down with the means test, no cuts in our wages'
'We want three pounds a week and a seven hour day'
And there wasn't a thing that we got but we fought for it
Don't you know bosses give nothing away?"
"And the strikes and the marches the battles to beat off
The bailiffs and coppers when hope was still young
Hot heads and hot hearts as we tested our power
'The Workers Triumphant, ' that was our song"
For a time he was silent and lost in his memories
Then but more softly his words came again
"Perhaps we fought for too much perhaps the cost was too much
There are things I know now that I couldn't know then"
"We believed revolution was just 'round the corner
And we were the vanguard to bring it about
And the other Left parties we classed as class traitors
Bourgeois social fascists of that we'd no doubt"
"And then the times changed we campaigned for the Popular Front
The old line might never have been
But we led the workers in combatting fascism
Mosley in London and Franco in Spain"
"We believed we were history's chosen
And Soviet Russia our future our heart and our soul
And the Five Year Plan was a vision of plenty
To us who'd spent half our lives on the dole"
"We knew of the trials and purges of course
And were shocked when we heard those old comrades confess
But yes we defend the first Workers State
In the face of the slander and lies of the press"
And you who have nothing at all to believe in
To you whose motto is money comes first
Who are you to tell us that our lives have been wasted
That all that we've fought for has turned into dust
You may think we were duped well we paid for our dreams
Broken lives, broken marriages, jobs lost and jail
Some lost heart in the Left, some betrayed us for medals
There are always some turncoats whose souls are for sale
But the best of us never surrendered our vision
And we kept the faith through the bleakest defeat
Do you think that was easy surrounded by hatred
The sneer of indifference the hurt of deceit
And our lives were made rich by the cause that we fought for
The friendship the fellowship sharing one pain
To transform society end exploitation
And that day will come yet but not in my time
Again he was silent and what could we tell him
That the world now was different that he'd had his day
That an old man's dreams were not our concern
But still, there was something he wanted to say
Now when I look back I see what we fought against
Homelessness hunger injustice and war
But what did fight for? What dream did we strive for?
I used to know once now I'm no longer sure
But you who have nothing at all to believe in
To you whose motto is 'money comes first'
Who are you to tell us that our lives have been wasted
That all that we've fought for has turned into dust
He was one of those lonely old men
Who live in the past telling stories you don't want to know
About how it was then the hunger, the hardship
The hopes and the struggles of so long ago
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Why, will they back you up in your equivalence of Mao Zedong and eg Sir Cliff Richard or Elvis Presley?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
You mean when people were killed in very large numbers for disagreeing with the Bolsheviks
It’s funny how so many British people hail the British Empire as a great thing and how the British improved the lives of millions of Indians, but they completely ignore all of the famines that happened and everything else and yet have the audacity to condemn Chairman Mao because of the famine that happened during the Great Leap Forward.
Oh, the irony...
Flavour
hang the bankers
Disingenuous, says the guy who claims nobody was killed by the Bolsheviks between 1917 and 1924 except when they had guns in their White Army hands and were directly firing upon Red positions, correct? You're a braindead Trotskyist idiot and to be fair you're only getting so many responses because we haven't had one like you around here for over a decade
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Every aspect of Soviet Policy after the Revolution resulted in major loss of life, denial of basic human rights and basic humanity, collosall damage to society and the environment, and a consistently authoritarian, racist, hypocritical approach to everything. The Civil War, the Red Terror, War Communism, de-Cossackisation, the anti-kulak campaign, forced collectivisation, the Great Purges, the attacks on Poland and Finland, the mass deportation of national minorities. None of it was any good. There's no point in blaming the Czech Legion or Socialist Revolutionaries. This was all the product of a flawed implimentation of a flawed idea of socialism.
Try reading the thread from the start again, and try hard, really hard, to comprehend my posts.
I’m not a Trotskyist, you absolute clown, haha!
well I cannot answer that and wouldn’t try to
piffle
You ignored my question and continued to waffle on with more unsubstantiated claims.
Racist? Lenin decreed for all non-ethnic Russians to have independence from Russian authority and establish their own nation-states, you moron.
Flavour
hang the bankers
Extremely naive Leninist revisionist arrogant prick who thinks anyone who doesn't agree with him has reading comprehension issues, then
One moment I’m a Trotskyist and the next moment I’m a Leninist...
You really don’t have a clue.
Fuck off, you moron.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
A straw man and whataboutery in one post, well done
JimW
支那暗杀团
I've no time for whataboutery as it makes for useless analysis; I think you can condemn the failures of the Great Leap entirely from a Chinese context regardless of failings and crimes elsewhere. More than that, the way it played out stands as a condemnation of what the party became and how it ruled - a genuine mass movement of peasants not afraid to fight the Japanese and the civil war but all locked into a dynamic where they largely went along with a policy they could see was killing people for years before the correction finally came.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
You've misspelled no
I agree with you. But, according to some people one bad thing means every thing was bad.
Polls have shown that most Chinese people think that Chairman Mao’s achievements outweigh his mistakes.
Flavour
hang the bankers
One moment I’m a Trotskyist and the next I’m a Leninist...
Fuck off, you moron.
Practically all Trotskyists are also Leninist, indeed I've never met a Trotskyist who wouldn't also self-describe as a Leninist, ever. But there are Leninists who are not Trotskyists, including Stalinists. So, there you go. And people who claim that Lenin was not responsible for any extrajudicial deaths beyond those absolutely necessary to win the civil war tend to be Leninists. But you're neither. Ok. Why are you here? What are you trying to prove? It should be obvious that we're all having a jolly good laugh at your expense.
As if you really think that I’m going to give you a reply to that nonsense...
I shall inform you that I’m also having a “jolly good laugh” at imbeciles like you.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Rule number 1 when looking at Soviet history. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and all the Bolshevik leaders all lied through their teeth. So too did those Party members who stayed alive.
Rule number 2. Very often they did exactly the opposite of what they said.
Rule number 3. See rules numbers 1&2.
Flavour
hang the bankers
Colour me "informed". Tell us more about the Worker's Paradise circa 1917 to 1924 please
Disruptive Conduct
that’s you ‘hing is it? Having a jolly good laugh at somebody’s attempt at discourse. How much those season tickets cost you at the aircraft hanger?
Except that wasn’t a lie.
The only person lying through his teeth here is you. Time and time again you just make claims without any evidence to support them. Give it a rest.
Colour me "informed". Tell us more about the Worker's Paradise circa 1917 to 1924 please
No, because you’re not interested in an honest discussion and you would rather resort to personal attacks. So I suggest you should go and bore someone else.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Plenty of societies and also some historical periods would disprove that as something that's inevitable or inherent to some unchangeable 'human nature'. As would many interactions people have with one another on a day to day level. Plus of course, just because something has not existed before doesn't mean it couldn't in the future.
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